Just the facts… a. Describe the colors, lines, shapes, texture, and space you see in the image. b. What do you notice first in this picture? Where is your eye led? c. How many faces do you see? d. What are the people wearing? How are they posed? e. Are you looking up or down at the people in the image? f. When was this picture made?

Analyze and Interpret… In your opinion… a. What are the people in the photograph looking at? b. What are the expressions on their faces? c. What are they thinking? d. At what time of day might the photograph have been taken? e. Where was the photograph taken? f. What do you think they are doing?

Migrant Mother Photograph taken by Dorothea Lange

About the artist Born in New Jersey Lived in San Francisco, CA when the Great Depression began (1929) Lange worked for the U.S. Department of Agriculture to document the lives of the American farm worker Her work taking pictures of rural workers and the hardships they faced solidified her reputation as a skilled documentary photographer (All of the photographs in this presentation are the work of Dorothea Lange)

Why did so many families move to California?? The Dust Bowl In addition to the crippling economic depression in the US, farming practices in the Midwest created the perfect conditions for the Dust Bowl Areas in Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas, Colorado, and New Mexico, had little rainfall, light soil, and high winds, a destructive combination. When drought struck from 1934 to 1937, the soil lacked the stronger root system of grass as an anchor, so the winds easily picked up the loose topsoil and swirled it into dense dust clouds, called “black blizzards.” A dust bowl “farm”

Families looked for jobs as migrant farm workers Large scale agriculture. Gang labor, Mexican and white, from the Southwest. Pull, clean, tie and crate carrots for the eastern market for eleven cents per crate of forty-eight bunches. Many can make barely one dollar a day. Families cannot make enough money to survive Heavy oversupply of labor and competition for jobs is keen Near Meloland, Imperial Valley California

Living in a Tent City

Life as a migrant farm worker As a group, take a look at a few more pictures taken by Dorothea Lange. What title would you give this picture? What message do you want the title to convey? AND/OR If Dorothea Lange were still alive, who do you think she would photograph today? Why?